Someone Stole My Blog Post

Passing off another writer's work as your own is plagiarism. Plagiarism is stealing.

A well-known spam blog has stolen a post I made at my Performancing blog entitled Be A Happy Hooker, which is of course about writing compelling hook sentences. Hijacked it in its entirety down to every comma and period.

I immediately contacted the blog owner via Comments, the only way I've found to communicate with this blog. I've demanded they remove my post. I've also contacted Technorati where I found the link early Monday morning. (Imagine my surprise when I saw my work on someone else's blog!) I let the people at Performancing know also.

Then I went to my friend Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today. He directed me to the Stock Letters he keeps on his site to help victims file copyright infringement claims with the proper authorities according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Jonathan's site is a treasure trove of information and gives the procedure to follow when you find your blog posts etc. are being stolen.Thus, I've contacted that blog's host and am writing letters to the major Search Engines also.

If the copyright infringer doesn't remove my post within 72 hours, you'll be reading more about this, and I'll be mailing those letters.

If you're wondering why I don't name this scum, I don't want to send traffic his way. But I will be naming names if he or she doesn't comply.

Takeaway Truth

We are all on a slippery slope in this digital age. We should all do what we can to ensure the integrity of copyright, even if that means we have to take action over what some may view as trivial issues.